Youth Visions on a Just Transition of European Labour Markets
How do young people across Europe experience the intersection of social and climate factors in the job market? What are the essential ingredients for a labour market that leaves no one behind? By drawing on diverse youth perspectives from across Europe, this session looks to envisage how European labour markets can support the aspirations of young people and the imperatives of climate action.
Speakers
Agata Meysner – President of Generation Climate Europe
Agata Meysner is an activist and an environmentalist driven by empowering young people to become climate changemakers in their communities. She is leading Generation Climate Europe, the largest coalition of youth-led networks on climate and environmental issues in Europe. She has served in several advisory roles to different organisations focusing on meaningful youth engagement, environment and system change, most recently in the OECD Youth Advisory Board.
Jonas Mockunas – Advisor, Lithuanian Parliament
Born in a rural village in Lithuania, Jonas finished his studies of Political science and economics in Kaunas. During those years he started an NGO that helps his hometown youth enact change, and got elected into the city council of Plunge. Since the start of the NGO, it has developed many projects in many fields, such as fighting inequality, youth empowerment, youth politics, and sports. In the municipality government, the issues that he mainly focused on were young family problems, city development, education and employment, and having the municipality enter an eco-friendly path. Now, Jonas is an advisor to two MP’s in the Lithuanian Parliament, continues to manage the NGO, as well as he is a council member of the political party “Democrats of Lithuania”, board director of the youth organization “Young Democrats of Lithuania”, and loves bouldering.
Viviane Triems – Spokesperson of Queer Working Group, Die Grune Jugend
Viviane Triems is 26 years old and comes from Dresden, Germany. She has been living in Potsdam, Brandenburg since 2019 and started her political activities then and there. She holds bachelor’s degrees in sociology and law and is currently studying law, with particular focus on international and European law. She began with climate activism, and now her political activities focus primarily on defending queer rights, human rights, European values, democracy, and anti-fascism. She is the speaker of the queer working group of Die Gruene Jugend. She is also the spokesperson for diversity for Die Gruene in Brandenburg. In her own words: ‘The European Union is more than an economic area. It stands for defending human rights and equality, overcoming borders, and protecting peace.’
Eden Czaban – Spokesperson of Queer Working Group, Die Grune Jugend
Eden Czaban is a 19-year-old member of the Polish Young Greens.They took part in the 2021 European Green Activist Training and have been actively engaged in volunteering for different organizations and foundations. Notably, they played a role in organizing the local Pride March with Stonewall Poznań, ensuring a peaceful participation in both 2021 and 2022. They worked with the elderly in the local Hospice Palium through Motyli Wolontariat. With Wspólna Droga, they organised as well as played in theatre plays with people with varying intellectual disabilities. As a queer nonbinary person themselves, lgbtq+ issues are of great importance to them in everyday life, especially trans rights. They’re also passionate about women and animal rights and neurodiversity.
Lavinia Mazzei-International Cooperation Officer at Solidar
After a master’s in international relations and European Studies, with a thesis on Arctic governance and Climate Change, Lavinia worked for the Climate Finance Group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC), a regional initiative that brings together civil society organizations and academic institutions that work to promote transparency, accountability and the inclusion of human rights, gender equality, and sustainability criteria for the construction of a financial architecture that effectively addresses climate change in the region. She then moved to Brussels where she started working for SOLIDAR, where she is currently leading a project promoting a Just Transition for the Global South focusing on the international dimension of the European Green Deal, and on how to ensure policy coherence for sustainable development of EU policies in partner countries.
Moderator: Lena Anna Kuklińska– Project Officer, FYEG
Lena Anna Kuklińska is a 25-year-old Project Officer for the Federation of Young European Greens, Project Assistant for Green REV Institute, and since 2022 Co-chair of Ostra Zieleń — Polish Young Greens. She completed her LLB in Global Law at Tilburg University and her LL.M. in European and Transnational Law of Intellectual Property and Information Technology at Georg-August Universitat Goettingen, specialising in unfair competition law, greenwashing and access to information. She is an animal rights and youth participation activist, in her daily work focusing on empowering young people to become leaders in their communities and on fixing the broken food system. She completed an internship in the European Parliament in the office of MEP Dr Sylwia Spurek, where she partook in the works on the Gender-based Violence Directive and promotion of the White Paper on Industrial Farming.